Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/75

Rh This was the last performance of mine that my mother witnessed. She was very feeble and died the following January. My son helped her into the Metropolitan Opera House by a side entrance and sat with her this night. All my stage career she had been torn between two ambitions, one to see me one of the great of the dramatic stage, the other as one of that glittering company of the elect at the Metropolitan Opera House. This night she saw me on the stage of that house in one of the great rôles of Shakespeare and she saw me successful. Much of my success was born of the surprise of the house that I could do it at all, but a success I was, gratifyingly so, before as stage-wise an audience as an actor may play to.

We went directly from the theater to the train, and as I would not see my mother again for some days, I rushed around to say good night to her as soon as I was quit of the stage. She could only put her arms around me and sob. A son, if only for a moment, had lived up to his mother's expectations.

The Lambs then had not yet ceased to take their annual Gambols on tour, and so I played Antony in eleven other cities, my last appearance in the classical drama. Twice, previously,